Rating: 7.5

For a release from the biggest non-Kanye name in hip-hop, much of the conversation surrounding Drake’s “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” has been about semantics and clarification.

It was released with a few days ago with no advance notice, a move that’s no longer innovative since it’s been done to near-death, but it’s still an unexpected surprise. It’s been called a mixtape, commercial mixtape, album and EP by Drake’s various labels, the media and Drake himself, the latter of whom prefers “mixtape.” Some impassioned fan already went and had the cover tattooed on the back of his neck.

An artist of Drake’s caliber dropping something of this magnitude creates waves, the waning ripples of which have yet to reach the shore — the tattoo ink has barely even dried — so let’s clarify a couple things: Drake is a vital musical figure. His grip on culture is gargantuan, but Drake’s importance doesn’t mean that everything he produces is of undeniable value.

The openness with which he discusses emotional vulnerability is important. His atmospheric electronic production style is important. “Take Care” is important. “Nothing Was the Same” is important. “Views From the 6,” his upcoming album, might also be important. “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” is good, better than a lot of albums/mixtapes/whatevers that have come out in 2015 so far, but it’s not important.

The biggest enemy of future success is past success; every new Drake release isn’t competing with whatever else is happening at the time. It’s going up against his own discography; the biggest drawback of phenomenal accomplishment is that you become your own measuring stick. There’s no “Started From The Bottom” or “Hold On, We’re Going Home” on this mixtape, and that’s going to hurt perception of it.

But imagine context doesn’t exist and this mixtape is better off for it. Drake is hip-hop, but he’s inevitably pop as well. Pop is monster singles, and without them, pop doesn’t sell because it doesn’t actually exist, which is fine because this isn’t really pop. This mixtape might not even be about itself.

A surprise release is usually carried out to serve itself. It gets the artist back in the news and boosts sales of an album that’s truly new, a raw piece of audio that hasn’t yet been subjected to previews, build-ups, break-downs, features, think pieces, retrospectives, reactions, listicles and all that media noise. It’s free of societal bias: listen and decide what you think.

But what Drake might be doing here is a bait-and-switch, a watch-this-hand-while-I’m-really-doing-something-with-that-hand. “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” gives the world something to think about while waiting for the new Drake album aside from the new Drake album itself so it’s not old before it’s even had the chance to ripen.

Even if it might be a pawn in Drake’s study of album release methods, the bait is tasty, albeit not gourmet. The lack of single-worthy material leaves this mixtape a middling, cohesive album. The most singalong moment is the hook of the strongest track, “Energy,” which touches on the common Drake theme of having haters who are looking to jack his swag. The instrumental, like most of the rest that populate “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late,” is minimalistic with electronic flourishes that pushes the record away from being a lull and towards having consistent vibe.

If Tribe Called Quest brought jazz to hip-hop and Kanye’s most recent material introduced raw industrial music to the mix, then Drake might be the pioneer of ambient hip-hop — apologies to cLOUDDEAD, who made some top rate ambient hip-hop in the early 2000s, but not as accessibly as Drake is doing now. But it’s all context, which got Drake to where he is but might not serve his latest mixtape, a decent release in its own right, as well as it should.